This was our last week at Longfellow before finals and break. It is a bittersweet feeling; more bitter than sweet seeing as I do not want to leave my students for three whole weeks, especially when we had such an exciting and progressive week! This week for our weekly focus goals we remained focused on 11-20 ten frames but for problem solving we focused on the make a number concept. With this concept, I would give the students a set number of tiles (example: 12) and we would construct a problem (12 kids were sledding, some went on the sled and some stayed behind). The students would then take the tiles and construct number sentences showing me all the different ways they could make the number 12. The most exciting thing I noticed with this activity is that students who we had been working with to do a variation of the same thing with dice patterns were able to grasp this concept. In fact, a student who had not been grasping the dice concept that we have been pushing took this new way to “make a number” and ran with it. I prompted her to show me one way to make 12 and instead she showed me four ways! I was absolutely blown away! It was very exciting to see this substantial leap forward after weeks of struggling to make a connection.
Another big breakthrough I had this week with my group was the ability to look at a full ten frame and recognize that as the number ten without having to count each dot. Last week I mentioned that many of my students were on the cusp of understanding this concept. This week, they were able to not only understand this idea but also apply it! Many of my students when given ten frames representing numbers 11-20 would simply tell me the number without counting each of the dots. When I asked them how they did that without counting each student told me: “Well I know a full thing is ten and then there is 1 (or two, three, etc.) so it is 11. I was so impressed and excited to see the students move forward. With all of these exciting breakthroughs I cannot wait to return after break and pick up where we left off!

Posted on February 8th, 2013 by abbeywilson10
Filed under: Uncategorized